TORONTO, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- A new study says patients with high levels of trust in their regular physicians are healthier than those with less trust in their doctors.
"We found that people who said they trusted their doctor more were less likely to put off care for medical needs or problems they've had in the past year than people who didn't trust their doctors," said lead author Stefanie Mollborn, a Ph.D. student in sociology at Stanford University.
The study, published in the journal Health Services Research, measured the association between trust and health-care needs in a variety of ethnic backgrounds and income levels among people who had a regular physician, the Toronto Sun reported.
It found that less trust was associated with delayed care and especially with unmet health needs in most patients.
Surprisingly, patients who are more educated are more likely to have unmet or delayed health-care needs than patients with less education, the newspaper said.
The study found that trust did not have any effect in putting off needed health care for disadvantaged groups such as seniors, African-Americans, Hispanic-Americans, people below the poverty line and people without health insurance.
